Kobach: Only public high school IDs valid for voting

Sen. Laura Kelly and Rep. Sean Gatewood chat before a candidate forum at Seaman High School. Their Republican challengers, Dick Barta and Joshua Powell, were absent.

After weeks of uncertainty, Secretary of State Kris Kobach's office said Wednesday that public high school IDs will be accepted at the polls but private school IDs won’t.

That decision wasn’t well-received by St. Thomas Aquinas High School president Bill Ford.

"It's disappointing they chose to go in that direction," Ford said.

Ford's school, located in Olathe, is one of the largest private institutions in the state, with 963 students. With 245 students in the school’s senior class, Ford estimated that maybe 60 are of voting age.

Mike Burrus, president of Kapaun Mt. Carmel High School in Wichita, said "virtually all" of his voting-age students were likely to have driver's licenses, but he still found it curious that the law allows for voting with IDs issued by accredited private colleges, but not high schools.

"Certainly we feel that our student ID cards are every bit as legitimate as those issued by the public schools," Burrus said.

League of Women Voters officials repeatedly asked for clarification on high school IDs in recent weeks after beginning a voter registration drive that will take them to about a dozen area schools.

The Secure and Fair Elections Act voter ID law spearheaded by Kobach that took effect this year doesn’t explicitly list them as approved identification, but officials in Kobach's office have said IDs issued by public schools may be allowed under a category that validates any ID issued by a municipal or county government.

Still, as recently as two weeks ago elections officials in multiple counties said they didn’t believe even public school IDs were acceptable. And Rick Strecker, president of Hayden High School in Topeka, said that if the IDs from his private Catholic institution have the same information as public school IDs, they should also be valid for voting.

Kay Curtis, Kobach's spokeswoman, issued a statement via email Wednesday in response to a request for comment on whether the high school ID questions have since been ironed out.

"Because this is the first year that the SAFE Act is in effect, the secretary of state's office has taken a permissive interpretation of the law to assist people in compliance," the statement reads. "Accordingly the secretary of state's office has interpreted (the valid ID statute) as including public high school IDs. However, the law cannot be interpreted to include private high school IDs. There is no data that currently shows that high school IDs have been or will be used under the SAFE Act in large numbers."

Curtis' statement says that in 2013, the secretary's office will issue "regulations delineating which of the more borderline IDs will be acceptable and which will not." Examples of "borderline IDs" given include high school IDs, municipal swimming pool IDs and library cards with photograph.

Kobach has said the ID laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud, but critics say instances of in-person voter fraud are nearly nonexistent and the law will disproportionately affect such groups as the poor and elderly.

Asked about the Kansas voter ID requirements at a candidate forum Tuesday evening at Seaman High School, Sen. Laura Kelly and Rep. Sean Gatewood, both Topeka Democrats, said they seem logical on the surface, but the state hasn’t done enough to ensure they won't disenfranchise legal registered voters.

They specifically cited groups like Kansans with disabilities and the elderly who no longer drive.

Kelly also said she is concerned married women who have changed their names will have extra hurdles next year when proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration go into effect. She called the requirements "a solution in search of a problem," saying the Legislature looked for voter fraud and didn't find any.

Their comments came the same day a court in Pennsylvania ordered that state's voter ID law suspended for further review until after the election. The presiding judge determined that the gap between the estimated voters without IDs and the number of free voter IDs issued was too great.